1. Field
The following description relates to a plasma processing apparatus and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a plasma processing apparatus and a method thereof for uniformly processing a substrate using an activated plasma gas.
2. Background
Plasma is a high ionized gas including positive ions and electrons of the same number. Plasma discharge may be used for gas excitation to generate an active gas including ions, free radicals, atoms, and molecules. The active gas is widely used in various fields. In addition, the active gas is variously used in various semiconductor manufacturing processes, for example, etching, deposition, cleaning, ashing, and the like, for manufacturing devices such as an integrated circuit device, a liquid crystal display, a solar cell, and the like.
Plasma sources include various kinds thereof and may correspond to a capacitive coupled plasma source and an inductive coupled plasma source as typical examples. The capacitive coupled plasma source may enhance process productivity in comparison with other plasma sources because of the high accuracy in capacitive coupled control and a high level of ion control ability. However, when a capacitive coupled electrode is enlarged according to the increase of the substrate to be processed, the electrode may be deformed or damaged by deterioration thereof. In this case, the non-uniformity of electric field intensity can cause non-uniformity of plasma density and contamination within a reactor.
In the inductive coupled plasma source, when an area of an inductive coil antenna is increased, it may be difficult to obtain the uniformity of the plasma density. In addition, when the large-sized substrate to be processed is heated at high temperature at once, the surface of the substrate may crumple and shrink and it may be difficult to process uniformly the entire surface of the substrate because of the non-uniformity of the plasma density.
Recently, there has been a demand on an improved plasma processing technique because of various causes including micro-miniaturization of a semiconductor device and the maximization of the substrate to be processed like a silicon wafer substrate, a glass substrate or plastic substrate for manufacturing semiconductor circuits, and development of a new processing target material, and the like. For example, there has been a demand for an improved plasma source and a plasma processing technique having excellent processing ability with respect to the large-sized substrate to be processed.
Furthermore, various semiconductor manufacturing devices may use a laser. The semiconductor manufacturing process using the laser is widely applied to various processes such as deposition, etching, annealing, cleaning, and the like, with respect to the substrate to be processed. The semiconductor manufacturing process using the laser has the problems described above and disadvantages including a high manufacturing cost and an increase of a processing time.